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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Painting for Keeps @LandraGraf @AfterGlowsPub

An invitation to Cupid’s Café will change your life.

Agatha, Aggie, Kakos lost her boyfriend, her apartment, and now,
is one brownie bite away from purging her binge when an invitation to Cupid’s
Café shows up on her doorstep. Fighting bulimia and her
mother’s constant verbal abuse has never been easy, but this
nutritionist is determined to be stronger than her weakest
link. She’ll meet a secret admirer at Cupid’s for a morale
booster, if nothing else.

Following a break-in and the destruction of his paintings,
starving artist Murphy O’Shea finds himself at wit’s end. Not
only does he need to create twelve more paintings, but in the midst of
another manic depressive episode, the challenge seems
impossible. He’s got two months or he’ll have to cancel his first show.
The Cupid’s Café invite offers him a chance to find his muse.
He doesn’t expect it to be the woman he’s mirrored the past two
year’s paintings on, nor does he plan on being able to offer Aggie
the help she needs.

Can they find a way to conquer their inner demons or will
they succumb to the idea they aren’t worth a happily ever after?

Author Bio: Landra
Graf consumes at least one book a day, and has always been a sucker for stories
where true love conquers all. She believes in the power of the written word,
and the joy such words can bring. In between spending time with her family and
having book adventures, she writes romance with the goal of giving everyone,
fictional or not, their own happily ever after

Excerpt:

Moisture welled in her eyes and she heard Murph's chair
squeak as the legs slid sharply against the linoleum floor. Before she could
object, or even answer his question, he hauled her to her feet and wrapped her
in a hug. The way their bodies aligned, in some perfect way, like two puzzle
pieces joining together, hit her straight in the chest and a knot formed there.

This hug touched her emotional center more than the first
one. She could easily blame it on all the memories she'd stirred, coupled with this
display of affection. Jordan had heard her cry about her family before and
always told her to forget them, live in the now with him. Murph did the
opposite.

“They were assholes, and I know it hurts. But this hug is
a good memory. One you can draw on when the bad ones surface, which they always
do even when we don’t want them. I'm not leaving you.”

She squeezed him back, loving how his muscled parts fit
against her soft ones. She was incredibly softer than he, but it worked. He
held her tighter and smelled of pine and paint, a refreshing scent. When they
finally pulled apart, more like their upper halves loosening the hold on one another,
he kept his arms and hands entangled with hers. They’d shared something, a
common respect for both of them being a bit damaged, a bit not-quite-right.

They locked eyes and for a moment, Aggie believed he'd
kiss her. She wanted him to. Just once, to know what the experience of kissing
someone who got her was like.